I find the majority of the comments in this thread pretty concerning and quite honestly shocking.
I didn't expect HN to be basically so obscurantist and to act so similarly to medieval alchemists (and that's not being fair to alchemists).
So apparently theory is useless, all that matters is the "art" and empirical results ?
Especially since quite a few of the comments here dismiss this work, and related, with a quick "well it's trivial/ well known?" and then procede to give their own personal explanation that show a clear misunderstanding of the topic.
I don't have any skin in this game, but it's clear even to me that the comparison with alchemists isn't valid: neural nets, and CNNs in particular have achieved actual results, whereas alchemists did not.
I didn't expect HN to be basically so obscurantist and to act so similarly to medieval alchemists (and that's not being fair to alchemists).
So apparently theory is useless, all that matters is the "art" and empirical results ?
Especially since quite a few of the comments here dismiss this work, and related, with a quick "well it's trivial/ well known?" and then procede to give their own personal explanation that show a clear misunderstanding of the topic.